Black and Blue

Title: Black and Blue: Inside the Divide Between the Police and Black America
Author: Jeff Pegues
Genre: nonfiction, American history, racism, civil rights, African American history

**This review has been adapted from a book review I wrote for my Anthropology and Pop Culture class**

            The beating of Rodney King was one of the most infamous police brutality cases of the twentieth century. Police brutality cases involving African American men appear to be on the rise in recent years- between 2014 and 2017, Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Keith Lamont Scott, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Philando Castile, and Terrence Crutcher died during police interactions or while in police custody. Jeff Pegues, in Black and Blue: Inside the Divide Between the Police and Black America, brings to light why police brutality is once again making headlines throughout America: the roots of racism in police brutality, the lack of accountability in policing, and the need for reconciliation between the police and the African American community.

            The first theme that Pegues tackles in his book is accountability. Members of the police and African American communities were interviewed by Pegues about their thoughts on police accountability. Both sides agreed that police need to be held accountable and punished when they overstep their bounds but each side measured that accountability in different ways. Achieving accountability was on the minds of many Chicagoans after the police shooting death of Laquan McDonald in 2014. After the shooting, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) originally released a statement that the shooting was justified after McDonald had acted in an aggressive manner; when the video was released to the public thirteen months later, the video revealed that “Van Dyke fired the first sixteen shots, and Laquan McDonald was leaning away from the officer. The CPD’s so-called code of silence had been exposed along with other systemic problems going back decades” (Pegues 2017:63).

            What is the “code of silence’? It depends on whom Pegues interviewed. Mayor Rahm Emanuel described the code of silence as “the tendency to ignore. It is the tendency to deny. It is the tendency [to] in some cases cover up the bad action of a colleague or colleagues” (Pegues 2017:46). Dean Angelo, a CPD veteran and president of the Fraternal Order of Police claims the thin blue line “keeps the beast from the door” and is “the line of separation between the good and the bad” (Pegues 2017:54). To Angelo the code of silence is not covering a colleague’s bad behavior but “listening, not talking. Learn by observing, learn by hearing” (Pegues 2017: 190). The police view the thin blue line and the code of silence as the noble concepts of protection and duty while the African American community views it as an “oppressive force” (Pegues 2017:50) of corruption.

            In response to the Laqaun McDonald shooting the CPD established the Police Accountability Task Force to “actively seek out, listen, and respond to voices all over this city” (Pegues 2017:63). The Police Accountability Task Force would also be responsible for the thousands of abuse complaints that are lodged against the CPD every year: “From 2011 to 2015, 40 percent of complaints against police officers were not investigated” (Pegues 2017:114). The Task Force also recommended the creation of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability- this agency would have “greater power to investigate alleged police abuse and the use of deadly force…offer recommended changes to both police policy and procedure” (Pegues 2017:222); Unfortunately, the civilian task force was a voter-based ordinance which was struck down by voters, especially voters in white neighborhoods that contained police residents.

            The rejection of the civilian-led accountability agency by white Chicagoans sheds light on a dirty secret within the police community (and the second theme of this book): the infiltration of white supremacists in the law enforcement community. Some of this infiltration manifests itself in obvious ways and sometimes racial bias within in police ranks is more insidious. In our class lecture, we learned that some Los Angeles police officers hailed originally from Mississippi and they brought their racial biases with them to California. These LAPD officers were known to cruise African American neighborhoods for the sole purpose of stirring up trouble by yelling racial epithets and acronyms from their police cruisers (Trunzo class lecture, September 5, 2017). Liberal San Francisco was no better in their viewpoints towards African Americans- one police precinct in an African American neighborhood was known to have a picture of a KKK grand wizard displayed on a public bulletin board (Trunzo class lecture, September 5, 2017).

            An example of insidious racial bias within law enforcement is the controversial “stop and frisk” policies initiated by the New York Police Department that were later adopted throughout the country. The original purpose of stop and frisk was crime prevention: “officers were encouraged to stop and question pedestrians and then frisk them for weapons” (Pegues 2017:26) but complaints and statistics show that this policy was abused by cops with racial motives and usually only enforced in minority communities. For example, in Baltimore stop and frisk was “concentrated in predominantly African American neighborhoods and often lacked reasonable suspicion” (Pegues 2017:22) and

BPD searched African Americans more frequently during pedestrian and vehicle stops, even though searches of African Americans were less likely to discover contraband. Indeed, BPD officers found contraband twice as often when searching white individuals compared to African Americans during vehicle stops and 50 percent more often during pedestrian stops (Pegues 2017:23).

On paper, this aggressive form of law enforcement appeared to lower crime but there were other repercussions: the breakup of families, job loss, increased prison populations, and the temptation by police departments to turn stop and frisk into a source of revenue.

            The final theme in Black and Blue is reconciliation which is repeatedly mentioned in the book by Pegues and by many of his interview subjects. Pegues recognizes that reconciliation will be a long process and hard work for both sides of the thin blue line. Pegues recommends a multi-step reconciliation process: acknowledgement, expungement of bad cops, sessions of open dialogue, and the establishment of positive interactions between civilians and the police.

            “This divide in the United States between law enforcement and black Americans shows that our country is still grappling with a troubled past when it comes to race” (Pegues 2017:99). The “troubled past” this quote refers to are the slave patrols in the colonial and antebellum periods of U.S. history and the Jim Crow laws “which set different rules for blacks and whites…based on the theory of white supremacy” (Pegues 2017:100). Because of hundreds of years of oppressive regulations, laws, and policing techniques, the African American community not only distrusts most police departments but has also had to resort self-protection because they knew help would not be available outside their community. Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) points out that acknowledgment of racial bias must also include racism within the police ranks, not just racism between police officers and the community (208).

            The cliché “one bad apple spoils the bunch” is also symbolic about bad cops who ruin the reputation of their own police department and the entire law enforcement community. The Chicago Police Data Project found that police officers “with 10 or more complaints- make up about 10% of the force but receive 30% of all complaints” (Pegues 2017:229). Another way to root out bad cops is the prevention of bad hires in the first place. Various entities quoted within this book mentioned that hiring standards for police officers needed to be increased: stricter psychological testing, increased salaries for police officers, and continuous training which includes: “bias awareness, crisis intervention, mental health issues, interpersonal and communication skills” (Pegues 2017:135) just to name a few, and police departments need to acknowledge that not every police academy candidate is mentally capable be a police officer. Local government officials also need to view police as “critical infrastructure… If we don’t invest in our infrastructure, what happens? It breaks down” (Pegues 2017:133). Finally, Pegues believes there must be civil, open dialogue between the police and the local African American community to build trust with one another. This tenuous trust must be sustained through continuous positive interactions between African Americans and law enforcement.

           

Tastes of Paradise

Title: Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants
Author: Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Genre: non-fiction, food and culture, food history, history, European history

**This review has been adapted from a reflective essay I wrote for my Modern World Civilization class**

            Spices and stimulants that are commonplace to twenty-first century Westerners were considered luxury items in medieval times and the early modern era: pepper, chocolate, tea, coffee, tobacco, and opium. I was surprised to read in Tastes of Paradise about the various controversies surrounding most of these items- who would have thought that chocolate and coffee had negative connotations and superstitions surrounding them? Even politics and the overall culture of a country played a part in who was able to enjoy these delicious bits of happiness.

Spices were used in medieval times in medicinal preparations and as social clues to denote a household’s rank in the social hierarchy: “The higher the rank of a household, the greater its use of spices” (4). In addition to being consumed in great quantities, spices were given as gifts between members of the nobility and sometimes used in lieu of cash payments (7). The long journey from India to Europe increased spices’ monetary value and added to spices’ allure as “emissaries from a fabled world” (6), especially in a time where very few Europeans traveled outside of their native homeland. The nobility and elite of Europe also used spices as a way to separate themselves from their common subjects- the poor souls who could not afford the expense of spices and whose status in the social hierarchy could not be “tasted” or shown to others (7).

            The use of spices by the European elite paralleled the elite’s new focus on “style”- clothes, home furnishings, etc.- all of which were supplied through Arabic traders throughout the Orient. The author compares the early modern era dependence on Arabic spice trading with the modern Western world’s dependence on Arab oil in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (9)- which brought to my mind the quote: “the more things change, the more they stay the same. Eventually the middle class in Europe expanded along with the demand for spices as the expanding middle class tried to emulate their wealthier contemporaries (10-11). High demand, high tariffs, and high prices along with increased understanding of sailing technology prompted European explorers (and their wealthy investors) to search for a direct sea route to India (10-11). By cutting out the Arabic traders/middlemen, Europeans hoped to decrease the prices of spices while keeping up with demand on the Continent: “Whoever controlled pepper would essentially control the purse-strings of a continent” (11-12).

            Views on alcohol in Europe swung from one extreme to the other from medieval time to the age of encounter. In medieval times alcohol, especially beer, was consumed daily “as the main source of nourishment for most central European and northern Europeans (22). Daily consumption started with beer soup for breakfast and continued throughout the day. Alcoholic beverages were also heavily consumed during special occasions and holidays. The common consumption of alcohol mixed with obligatory social drinking rites meant that intoxication was rampant. Intoxication was considered normalized behavior until the Protestant Reformation redefined man’s relationship with God and, by extension, alcohol (31).

            While Protestant attitudes towards alcohol were changing, coffee was becoming readily available as a substitute for alcohol. While alcohol numbed one to the miseries of life, the caffeine in coffee encouraged sobriety (35), increased efficiency and energy (39), and was believed to curb sexual libido (37): “It marked the start of the working day, formally putting an end to the night’s rest, and making its drinkers alert and cheerful for the day ahead” (63). Energy and efficiency were core virtues of the Protestant work ethic, thus, coffee became a popular non-alcoholic beverage in the Protestant-dominant countries of England and Germany.

            While chocolate is a beloved ingredient around the world now, chocolate was imported from the New World into predominantly Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain. Chocolate was originally used by the Spanish clergy as a “fasting drink” (91) during religious holidays but it soon became a status symbol of the aristocracy (91). When chocolate entered the world of the aristocracy it was a rich, sumptuous breakfast beverage that “created an intermediary state between lying down and sitting up” (91). Chocolate was the antithesis to coffee: it relaxed the body, was high in calories, and believed to be an aphrodisiac (perhaps that is why chocolate is a traditional Valentine’s Day gift?) (92). The status of chocolate declined in the nineteenth century as its popularity rose among the middle class: “The former status drink of the ancient régime had sunk to world of women and children. What formerly symbolized power and glory was now in the hands of those excluded from power and responsibility in middle-class society” (93).

            The Columbian exchange brought tobacco and its new way of consumption (smoking) to Europe during the Era of Encounter. Originally tobacco use was referred to as “drinking smoke” or “drinking tobacco” since European cultures had no point of reference or name for this new recreational habit: “The analogy with drinking was thus first a conceptual aid for grasping an otherwise bewildering novelty” (97). The medical view of tobacco was similar to that of alcohol: it dulled the senses, thought to be an anti-erotic agent, and first-time use could be an unpleasant experience. Since smoking calmed the nerves, the rituals around smoking tobacco focused on preparing one’s mental activity and concentration.

            As each smoking process (pipe, cigar, cigarette, etc.) grew in popularity, the actual time spent on smoking and its accompanying rituals decreased (111). Schivelbusch theorizes that the modes and amount of smoking in a society reveal that society’s “standards of tranquility and concentration” (115) and “demonstrates to what depth the culture is permeated by nervousness” (129). I thought this was an intriguing correlation. Often attributed to world events, social factors, or personality traits, anxiety seems to be at an all-time high in American society. What if American anxiety levels are so high because Americans are smoking less? If this is true, it is a terrible trade-off though- smoke now and be calm, die of lung cancer later.

            Opium was a commonly prescribed painkiller in the nineteenth century and used for a variety of mild or easily treatable medical conditions. Opium was the drug of choice of for poets, artists, and writers since it infused their artwork and writings with a dreamlike quality. Society viewed the lone wolf tendencies and mindsets of these artists and writers as dangerous: “It was the asocial significance attributed by poets to opium and hashish which first caused them to lose their identity as ordinary household remedies” (210). Awareness of the negative consequences of addiction due to the post-war morphine addicts of the various nineteenth century wars stripped away the glamor and appeal of opium.

            Another habit that was frowned upon by the upper and middle classes was the excessive consumption of distilled spirits (hard liquor). Of course, the definition of excessive consumption is subjective; what the upper and middle classes thought of as distasteful was the source of bonding among members of the lower working classes: “Drink and drunkenness carried no social stigma; on the contrary, they were almost a symbol of class identity” (149). The working classes consumed their alcohol in loud, public places while middle class drinking subscribed to a more moderate mindset: “The middle-class citizen drank moderately, and he drank in a private circle” (148). Excessive drinking was also a form of escapism for the lower working classes- industrialization increased the physical and mental energy expected of workers without an appropriate increase in pay or rest. Many urban workers had migrated from the countryside for economic opportunity only to find themselves living in squalid living conditions and without the financial and emotional support of their extended family network.

            Like spices, liquor was originally used in medicinal preparations but it was also used in the military as part of a soldier’s rations before finding its way into civilian life during the Industrial Revolution. “Liquor… created new qualities of alcoholic inebriation, just as coffee created new qualities of sobriety. The polarity of these effects was reflected in the polarity of the two classes that adopted these drinks” (152). Liquor sped up the inebriation process which Schivelbusch parallels to the “processes of acceleration of the modern age” (153). Wine and beer were looked upon more favorably (by the upper classes) as acceptable forms of alcohol for the lower classes- these drinks kept the social and political bonds alive for the working masses without the constant and debilitating drunkenness (165).

            After reading this book it is my opinion that coffee had the most positive effect on Europe and world history (personally, I am a chocoholic so this was hard to admit). Coffee consumption increases a person’s physical energy level and mental prowess (temporarily). Increased physical and mental energy was needed in the Industrial Revolution to increase efficiency, production, and consumption. Coffee also contributed to the field of journalism, discourse, and free thought- coffeehouses were the precursors to newspapers and were available to the common man, although, unfortunately, not to the common woman (57). Although coffee consumption eventually moved to the domestic sphere, newspapers, literature, and journalism stayed in the public sphere and contributed to the Western ideals of free speech and free thought.